“ DWM is my closest and oldest friend, and I in turn like to think that I have come perhaps closest to appreciating the unity of his myriad lives and masks – often so contradictory and perplexing and enraging to outsiders. And also to knowing the man within – often sensitive, humorous, gentle and very human, and always empathic and inspiring.

Life for him has been and is an opportunity to be revelled in and not to be wasted. This work presents aspects of that life (and there is much left unwritten) and is a reminder to all of us who can all too easily lose ourselves in the illusory mundane existence of this present age.

DWM is a traveller in all senses, a pioneer leading the way in exploring the uncharted worlds within, around and without us. Perhaps many decades or centuries hence, he will be understood and celebrated as the human voyager he is: an example of one nexion of life seeking to understand itself within the infinite cold spaces of the cosmos. “

Editorial Note, 01.10.09: The following article was originally published on the Rigorous Intuition blog in August 2005, and since it is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting articles written about Myatt, I reproduce it in full here, even though there are several factual errors, about Myatt, in the article. For instance, the Interview once in the Hexagon Archive was with Stephen Cox, not Myatt; Cox was never even a member of the ONA (let alone its leader); and his Occult group had no connection to either the ONA or Myatt .

Nine Angles of Separation

“ In the mid-90s, in an essay entitled “Death Before Dishonour,” British neo-Nazi political philosopher David Myatt wrote:

To live and act like an Aryan – that is, with nobility of character – means upholding and living by this principle of Death Before Dishonour. Nothing else is more important – not personal happiness, not personal love, not personal comfort and wealth. This principle expresses the spirit, or ethos, of the Aryan warrior, and to be Aryan means to live like such a warrior, for however short a time.

Also, in “The Divine Revelation of Adolf Hitler”:

Quintessentially, the revelation of Adolf Hitler has rendered all other religions obsolete. For this is the first and most important revelation of the cosmic Being – of the purpose of the cosmic Being. Other religions now belong to the past; they are historical curiosities…. All these religions are earth-bound; they do not seek to fulfil a Destiny among the stars, bringing more life, more consciousness.

At about the same time, Anton Long, Grandmaster of the British-based “traditional” Satanic group the Order of Nine Angles, wrote:

We uphold human culling as beneficial, for both the individual who does the culling (it being a character-building experience) and for our species in general, since culling by its nature removes the worthless and thus improves the stock. Naturally, there are proper ways to choose who is to be culled – each victim is chosen because they have shown themselves to be suitable. They are never chosen at random, as they are never “innocent.”

The majority of Westerners condemn martyrdom operations on the basis of the Western perspective, using Western criteria, failing to understand the Muslim belief that this life of ours is only a means, a test, and thus failing to understand that many Muslims are willing to give up their own lives in order to do their Islamic duty, trusting as these Muslims do in the judgement of Allah…. Our life here on this planet we call Earth is only an opportunity – never to return – to gain entry into Jannah and that one of the best means to gain such entry is to strive, and if necessary die, in the Cause of Allah.

What do these people have in common? Everything. They – and many more, besides – are the same person. Let’s call him, for simplicity’s sake, David Myatt. But what he is, there’s nothing simple about that.

Combat 18 is a neo-Nazi org formed in 1991 to provide hooligan muscle for the racist British National Party. (Its “18” numerically represents “AH,” the initials of Adolph Hitler.) Myatt has described himself as its political philosopher.

There’s much suspicion, on the both the left and right, that Combat 18 “was created by Britain’s internal security service MI5 to discredit the BNP while acting as a honey trap, or sting operation, designed to attract the most violent neo-Nazis in Britain into a single organization, where they could be monitored more easily.” Its leader, Charlie Sargent, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1997 for the murder of another member, was also an alleged Special Branch informant.

Combat 18 splintered, with Myatt founding the most radical faction, the National Socialist Movement, which remained loyal to purported informant Sargent.

In 1999 NSM member David Copeland conducted a racist nail-bombing campaign which killed three people and injured 129. Myatt’s “A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution” was particularly formative to Copeland’s thinking. In a profile of Copeland, BBC’s Panorama determined:

…the man whose ideas had more influence than most on Copeland was David Myatt from Worcestershire, founder member of the NSM and its first leader. He once said the Nazi movement needed people “prepared to fight, prepared to get their hands dirty, and perhaps spill some blood.”

And though Combat 18 splintered under suspicion of members’ motives and loyalties, it isn’t quite finished yet being a bloody nuisance. A headline yesterday from Northern Ireland (where Combat 18 is reputed to be used by MI5 to infiltrate Loyalist paramilitaries): Neo-Nazis have threatened me, says Ulster assembly member John Dallat, who has received threats from Combat 18 to burn down his house and torch his office.

The Hexagon archives records an encounter with the unnamed leader of the “Order of Nine Angles” – apparently Myatt [ See Editorial Note, above] – who supposedly co-authored a book with associate “Christos Beest” which likened the ONA “to a modern equivalent of the German Thule Society, precursor of the Nazi Party and responsible for a number of assassinations of dissenters…the reader is lead to believe that the group are busy ‘culling human dross.'”

Hexagon, while refusing to disclose the name of the leader, found “a nucleus of four middle aged men surrounded by up to ten younger aspiring acolytes, again all male. The group [ See Editorial Note, above] uses homosexual rites and although they may well have contact with the far right are highly unlikely to be capable of carrying out numerous murders as darkly hinted at.”

In The Song of a Satanist, “Stephen Brown” – yet another Myatt pseudonym – writes:

Most Satanists cannot publish an autobiography, or even have a biography which relates their life in detail while they still live, for the simple reason that it would probably render them liable to prosecution by those asinine guardians of the even more stupid system of ‘Law’. (Plus the fact that most wish to continue their sinister esoteric work in secret, to aid the sinister dialectic.) If this threat does not exist, then their life has not been Satanic enough.

Another demonstration of the convergence of fascism and occultism is found in the ONA’s Temple 88, which is described as an instantiation of the “aryanist and national-socialist ideas/ideals of the Order of Nine Angles.” The writings of “Temple 88” are recommended for higher initiates, having “reached the seventh stage (Saturn) of the septenary Tree of Wyrd,” who are “assumed to be able to judge and understand why the usage of national-socialism and aryanism is implemented in the Order of Nine Angles ideological structure.”

And what are the Nine Angles? A ceremonial means to manifest the “Dark Gods.” And perhaps not surprisingly, here’s where things get Lovecraftian:

The details that Lovecraft gives regarding ‘calls’ and rites are mostly fanciful and only in a few places does he inadvertently reveal the truth – for example, in his mention of the trapezohedron and ‘Azathoth’. The key to travel along the passages between the star nexions is the Nine Angles and the key to the Nine Angles is the crystal tetrahedron which is activated by voice vibration. ‘Azathoth’ as described by Lovecraft, is a symbolic and distorted re-presentation of the intersection, in acausal space-time, of these astral star passages: a kind of galactic vortex or node. Those who journey there never return the same. Along the star passages the shells of long dead civilizations lie strewn. The Nine Angles (the key to contact both physical and astral) are re-presented in the septenary Star Game and it is through this symbolic re-presentation that the magick of the Dark Gods is made manifest. The rest, to the uninitiated, is sheer terror.

(Lt Col Michael Aquino has authored the Lovecraftian “Ceremony of the Nine Angles” for the Temple of Set, but disavows Myatt and the ONA’s public embrace of human sacrifice.)

And since we’ve come this far, let’s remind ourselves: according to the ONA, where do these “Dark Gods” reside?

The acausal universe itself may be described as that aspect of the cosmos bounded by acausal time and possessing more than three spatial dimenions; the causal universe may be described as that aspect of the cosmos bounded by causal, or linear, time and possessing three spatial dimensions at right angles to each other. The entities known to esoteric tradition as the Dark Gods are beings which exist in the acausal universe. Other such beings probably exist in the acausal realm, but the Dark Gods are known to us through having, at various times in our evolution, ‘intruded’ into our spatial universe.

As I’ve noted in an earlier post, the “acausal universe” recalls Michio Kaku’s Parallel Worlds, in which he writes that “anyone who can tap into the fourth spatial dimension (or what is today called the fifth dimension, with time being the fourth) can indeed become invisible, and can even assume the powers normally ascribed to ghosts and gods.” And interestingly, one of the things David Myatt may be said to be with some assurance is a student of physics.

In 2000 Myatt reputedly converted to Islam, and quickly became an advocate for al Qaeda “martyrdom operations.” Though as he had often done, Myatt hid his previous associations by assuming an alias. He became “Abdul Aziz.”

This story from February 16, 2003, entitled “Midland Nazi turns to Islam,” was one of the first to make the connection between the “Koranic scholar,” the neo-Nazi and the occultist:

A “Satanic Fuhrer” who urged neo-Nazis to fight a race war has turned full circle to become an Islamic fundamentalist.Midland-based David Myatt, 51, was the political guru behind white supremacist group Combat 18 and has been the leading hardline Nazi intellectual in Britain since the 1960s.Now the self-confessed Pagan and Adolf Hitler worshipper hails al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as his inspiration and praises the World Trade Center attacks as acts of heroism…supporting suicide missions and urging young Muslims to take up Jihad.

“Turning full circle” always sounded to me like a lot of fuss to create the appearance of motion, while returning to one’s starting point.

Is Myatt an agent provocateur, a shit-disturber who can’t settle upon a radical philosophy, something more, or something less? It’s difficult to assess motive, but consider that he has been arrested numerous times for such things as writing and disseminating “practical terrorist guides” on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. These cases have always been dropped due to “lack of evidence.” Does he enjoy protection? The record is suggestive that he does. And if it appears so, then we should ask the next question: Why?

One Muslim internet user told the Sunday Mercury that Myatt, who has an IQ of 187, had convinced other users he was an Islamic scholar with his eloquent arguments backed with Koranic verses. He said: “After September 11 Abdul Aziz’s messages started to become more extreme.“But because he wrote with authority, many less-knowledgeable Muslims thought he was a holy man and began supporting his fundamentalist views. When his true identity was revealed by other users on the site, he changed his online name to Abdul bin Aziz and then al Haqq.”

Myatt may seem to have flitted from one politico-religious philosophy to another, but there is a terrible thread of continuity and rigour through his life and writings that suggests he is much more than a disingenuous provocateur. Naziism and Islamicism have served, in turn, as modalities of disruption for what remains at core an occult working to sow general chaos and division – the necessary passage of “Helter Skelter” to break down the Old Order, before the founding of the New.

So again: whose interests are served by there being a David Myatt? Is he is own man – or men – or does he belong to someone else? Or is it something else – an intelligence service perhaps, or something, say, acausal? ”

Aeonics

The Numinous Cyclic Theory of David Myatt

by Kerry Bolton

British esotericist and now convert to Islam, David Myatt, formulated a cyclic theory called Aeonics. This merits individual attention as Aeonics provides another perspective on history from a specifically spiritual standpoint. Myatt’s Aeonics, as the term makes obvious, is based on cycles as “aeons” or Ages, each with its own numinous or spiritual character and stemming from what Myatt terms the acausal, the supra-natural acting upon the causal or physical world.

Myatt himself ascribes the foundations of Aeonics to both Spengler and Toynbee, (Myatt, 1984, 1-3) the latter providing the paradigm of civilisations as arising from challenges. Myatt’s own concern for much of his life has been the overcoming of the Western cycle of decline, that it might fulfil what he considered its destiny. While Toynbee states that Civilisations end in a last hurrah of world-empire, Myatt adds Spengler’s Faustian challenge, stating that the destiny of the Western Civilisation is that of Galactic Empire. Spengler’s definition of the Western cultural ethos as Faustian meant that the West’s own unique culture-soul is based on an unquenchable reach for infinity and exploration, unfolding all the secrets of nature. This Faustian ethos is manifested as the cultural soul in all the elements of the West in its cycles of becoming. Hence the distance and perspective of the art of Rembrandt and the feelings of infinity conjured by the outreach of the Gothic spire. (Myatt, 1984, The West, 3).

Myatt goes beyond this seeing the space ship, space exploration and ultimately galactic settlement and Galactic empire as the logical ultimate expression of the Faustian soul. (Myatt, 1984, The Faustian Spirit, 6). Myatt succinctly states: “If we need a symbol to represent our Western civilisation – to express its quintessence – it is the spacecraft.” (Myatt, ibid. 7.).The Western Civilisation would be superseded by a Galactic Civilisation just as the Roman Civilisation had superseded the Greek, and the Western the Roman.

This Western destiny Myatt explained in the opening paragraphs to Vindex referring to Toynbee in defining civilisations: “Acceding to Toynbee, a civilisation arises from either a physical or a social challenge – that is, civilisation is man’s successful response to a particular geographical or social challenge.” He gives as an e.g. the Egyptian civilisation as arising from the challenge of the Nile River Valley. Each civilisation declines and produces what Toynbee calls a “Universal State, usually an empire which lasts generally for a 400 year cycle. (Myatt, 1984, 1).

Myatt’s 1984 book was directed to those working on a causal, political level. Esoterically, Aeons could be influenced by those working magickally, adepts who had reached a level of consciousness to utilise the theory of Aeonics to work consciously to intervene in the cycles of history by opening the causal to acausal energies, or what are called the “dark gods”. Hitherto civilisations had arisen unconsciously, and man had been subject to the laws of cyclicity without being aware of the forces that were controlling him. Now through Aeonics and the conscious Aeonic magick directed by occult adepts, the cyclic laws could be consciously directed. Western Civilisation would go through its final cycle, but this would be the prelude to a new civilisation, the Galactic empire, extending the West’s Faustian scientific impulse.

In order for this destiny to unfold, those conscious of this cultural destiny would have to actively work for it both esoterically and exoterically. Myatt was therefore involved in formulating a system of occultism via the Order of Nine Angles (ONA), the primary magickal purpose being to open what Myatt called “nexions”, the meaning of which can be readily deduced from the word: a nexus or star-gate between the acausal and the casual worlds. The ONA had a unique pantheon of dark gods and goddesses relating to the opening of star gates through which acausal energies would be manifested on earth. A large corpus of occult literature was formulated by the ONA, indicating Myatt’s depth of occult knowledge.

Myatt explained the cyclic interregnum during which adepts could work to herald the next civilisation:

“Regarding Aeons, two important facts should be borne in mind. First the last five hundred years or so of an Aeon show a marked decline in the magickal energy associated with it, and it is during this time that the energies of the next Aeon gradually become evident (at first usually only to Adepts) these energies may be increased (or decreased) by Aeonic magick worked by those who understand the forces involved. Second, each Aeon is associated with what is called a ‘higher civilisation’ from which the Aeon usually takes its name. Within the physical confines of this higher civilisation is the (usually sacred) place where the magickal energies of the Aeon are pronounced – and this because such a place is usually a physical Gate where the causal and the acausal meet. For instance, the centre associated with the Hyperborean Aeon was Stonehenge; that of the Hellenic, Delphi. ” (Myatt aka Thorold West, 1989, Naos, The Septenary System).

In explaining terms, Myatt defines a Star-Gate or nexion as “a nexus between the acausal and the causal.” These star-gates are in the ONA Tradition “the regions of space near the stars Algol, Dabih, and Naos” and they are said to be actual physical gates, not simply metaphors. (Myatt, Naos, Notes on Esoteric Tradition).

The Adept opens a nexion within the psyche by following the “seven fold way” of the ONA, a grade system that tests the physical endurance of the aspirant as much as the mental and psychological. (Myatt, Naos, Part One: Physis Magick).

In defining the causal and the acausal, Myatt states that “the causal is the ‘physical universe”, described by three dimensional and linear time. The acausal is the universe described by “an unspecified number of spatial dimensions and by non-linear time.” Life is a manifestation of the acausal within the causal. It is in the psyche where the two universes coincide, and where the individual might become part of the acausal by opening a nexion. Archetypes are a manifestation of this. As this relates to Aeons, Myatt explains:

“An Aeon is a particular ordering of the causal on Earth which is manifest as a civilisation – i.e. an increasing of the acausal, usually at a specified place/area for a specified period of (linear) time). Magick is the presencing of the acausal in the causal.” (Myatt, Naos, Acausal/Causal).

These fundamentals of Aeonics and Aeonic magick were articulated and refined over a number of MSS some by Myatt, others by his protégé and successor as ONA Grand Master Richard Moult, a talented artist and musician, both often writing under the generic pseudonym Anton Long. [See Editorial Footnote below.]

Myatt himself has had a long spiritual odyssey, somewhat reminiscent of the legend of Doctor Faustus himself, a never-ending quest for knowledge.

In 1998 Myatt converted to Islam and identifies with the militant manifestations of the Muslim world. Like Ungern-Sternberg, who is considered below, who converted to a militaristic Buddhism as his answer to Bolshevism and Western decadence in the aftermath of World War I, Myatt became a Muslim as his answer to the West’s spiritual void and break with Tradition. He now sees the West as irredeemably lost and not capable of emerging from its cycle of decline. Myatt, now known as Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt, relates something of this spiritual odyssey in a recent interview:

“What it is about this faith, rather than all of the others, that has gripped you? What is it about Islamic culture, law and the way of life that has so spoken to your heart and soul over ours?”

Basically, Islam is a true middle-way. It is simple both in practice and in theory, and is an easy Way for we fallible, error-prone, human beings to become better individuals. Consider, for instance, prayer – Salat (also called Namaz). This is always short, and easy to do. It is a combination of words, gestures and movement – unlike any other form of prayer such as Nazarene, Buddhist, heathen. … In my life, I have experienced and performed many types of prayer – from Buddhist to Taoist to Anglican, to Catholic (including those of Benedictine and Carthusian monasticism) to Hinduism – and of all of them I found Namaz to be both the most human and the most numinous, the most imbued with the Divine, for we prostrate ourselves before God, knowing ourselves for the weak individuals we are. One of the many remarkable things I remember about Islam is when, only a short while after my own conversion, I went to travel again in the Desert, and it was so poignant doing Namaz there, with no one around for hundreds of miles: saying the same words, and praying in the same way, as the Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) had done, over one thousand and forty years ago; for alone, in the Desert, one can feel the closeness of God, of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala – feel how slender is the thread by which we cling to life. One can sense the true Peace that is Jannah (Paradise) and the wonder of Life, of Creation.” (Myatt, http://www.dwmyatt.info/questions-dm.html).

He sees Islam as the only means by which Western decadence can be swept from the world, to make way for a numinous civilisation based on Islam. Myatt sees instead of a Western Imperium leading to Galactic Empire, a world Muslim Civilisation; under a world Khalifate, re-establishing a chivalrous, honourable ethos, where the West cannot. One could be reminded that it was the Islamic civilisation in its “Spring” Cycle that provided the impetus for learning and culture, that brought much to Europe, laid the basis for modern chemistry and mathematics, and provided the basis for the West’s Knightly chivalry which the Crusaders had encountered among their Muslim foes.

While Myatt repudiates many of his previous views his fundamental ethos remains, the ideals of the numinous; of life based on honour and chivalry; a detestation of the ignoble and the cowardly, the hedonistic and materialistic that he continues to see dominating the West in its decline, and of the prospect of a Galactic Empire, all these now possibly being manifested under Islam rather than by calling upon dark astral gods. In a recent interview Myatt explains the position he’s adhered to since his conversion in 1998:

“What I gradually discovered in the years leading toward my reversion to Islam was that the numinous is presenced in Deen Al-Islam, and that it is Deen Al-Islam which today as in the past produces honourable, modest, individuals who possess manners, who respect what is sacred, and who thus are civilized. In addition, who are the honourable warriors of today other than the Mujahideen who fight against often overwhelming odds and who prefer death to dishonour? What kind of community – “society” – would and could Deen Al-Islam create were such honourable warriors to be triumphant? Would they not build a Khilafah led by an Ameer, a Khalifah (a leader) and would this Khilafah not be everything I once dreamed an Imperium might be, and might not this Khilafah be an example to others as the Khilafah in Al-Andulus was to the barbarians of Europe, and might it not, its enemies defeated, reach out toward the stars and so establish a new and Galactic Empire? Thus, as I wrote in an autobiographical essay:

“As for my dream, my life-long vision, of a Galactic Empire – of the exploration and settlement of Outer Space – there was a time, not that long ago, when I came to the conclusion that we human beings were too ignoble, too barbaric, too uncivilized, to do this, and that, if we did undertake such adventures beyond the Earth, we would only be spreading dishonour: spreading our disease of hubris, spreading our destruction of the Numinous. But now – now as I veer toward the sixth decade of my life – I feel that we can avoid such things: that there is a cure for the disease of hubris and of dishonour, and that were we to be cured – and thus return to our natural fitrah – then we could and perhaps should so venture forth, under the banner of Deen Al-Islam.” (Myatt, http://www.dwmyatt.info/questions-dm.html).

On a question regarding the present state of the West, Myatt states:

“The peoples of the West have significantly changed in the last fifty or so years. The England I knew as a youth, fresh from a life in the Far East and Africa – the England my father and my grandfather thought they fought in two World Wars for – has almost disappeared. Manners have been replaced with arrogant selfishness; gentlemanly (and lady-like) self-effacement and modesty has been replaced by loutish behaviour in public and in private; and restraint has given way to decadence, greed and self-indulgence. Honour is almost completely lacking, in public and in private. The West is now the domain of Homo Hubris: of the arrogant, the preening, the dishonourable human being who is intolerant of, or unmindful of, the numinous, which numinous is, in truth, the genesis of honour and of manners and of all the civilizing virtues.” (Myatt, ibid.).

From a cyclic perspective, the question remains as to whether Islam itself passed its own cycle of decline centuries ago, and descended irredeemably into what Spengler (Spengler, 1963, 159-186, Primitives, Culture-Peoples, Fellaheen) called a Fellaheen culture ; that is to say a culture that has expended all its energies, and is not capable of revival. At the very least, what might be said of the present world crisis is that Islam is the only bloc representing Tradition that is consciously in revolt against globalisation.

References:

Myatt David W., The Way of the Lighting & the Sun: A Western Martial Art, The Black Order (ONA), 1972.

While it is generally known and accepted that Moult was involved with the ONA and produced some of their writings and other works, such as “The Sinister Tarot” card deck, he never became a “Grand Master” – having left the group halfway through his training – and neither did he ever, according to my sources, use the pseudonym Anton Long.